Owners Of Proposed Marijuana Farm Site Sue Brick Zoning Board

BRICK, NJ — The owners of a former bank site on Adamston Road have filed a lawsuit against the Brick Township Board of Adjustment in the ongoing fight over the future of the property.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Superior Court in Ocean County, seeks the granting of an automatic approval of a plan to farm lettuce in a building proposed to be built at the site.

The lawsuit is just the latest move in the fight over the controversial site, which initially was proposed as a medical marijuana dispensary in August 2018 by 385 Adamston LLC, the owners of the property.

The proposal for a medical marijuana dispensary was amended in March 2019, replaced with a plan to grow medical marijuana on the nearly 7-acre property on Adamston Road that had operated as a bank for decades. The property sits in a rural residential zone, which permits farming, and is across the street from a residential neighborhood.

Residents of that neighborhood have been fighting the proposals from the start, first expressing significant concerns about safety if the site were to become a dispensary, and out of concerns about traffic.

The proposal to grow medical marijuana later shifted to plans to grow industrial hemp, and the Brick Township Planning Board referred the application to the zoning board, seeking its interpretation of whether growing hemp would be considered a permitted use. Days before the hearing, however, Dennis Galvin, the attorney for 385 Adamston, notified the planning board's attorney, Howard Hensel, that 385 Adamston would be farming lettuce at the site, saying he believed the interpretation hearing was no longer needed.

Hensel disagreed, and the zoning board ultimately ruled that growing lettuce in an indoor facility was not considered customary and conventional.

In the lawsuit, Galvin argues that zoning board ruling was arbitrary and capricious, and he additionally argues the township is, in essence, depriving the owners of 385 Adamston of putting the property to use.

"The growing of crops indoors is customary and conventional," the lawsuit states, adding that there is nothing in New Jersey's Right to Farm Act "to suggest that farming indoors is not a legitimate agricultural activity."

The township, through the planning and zoning board actions, "has demonstrated that it will not permit Plaintiff to use its property in accordance with the applicable zoning ordinances and have done everything in their power to ensure that Plaintiff's property will remain open space," the lawsuit states. It also alleges Mayor John Ducey made a remark in a Township Council meeting saying the town and residents "do not want new business development (on the property) and do not want Plaintiff to remove any trees or vegetation."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages as well as the automatic approval of the proposed farm site plan.

• Brick Company Hopes To Open Medical Marijuana Dispensary In Town
• Tension Marks Meeting On Proposed Brick Medical Marijuana Site
• Medical Marijuana Dispensary Proposal Before Brick Zoners
• Brick Zoners Continue Medical Marijuana Dispensary Hearing
• State Delays New Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Decision
• Medical Marijuana Dispensary Proposal Before Brick Zoners Again
• Medical Marijuana Dispensary Proposal In Brick Postponed
• Brick Firm's Medical Marijuana Permit Bid Fails
• Canceled Dispensary Hearing Draws Brick Zoning Board Chair's Ire
• Medical Marijuana Dispensary Shelved In Brick
• Brick Zoning Interpretation Sought On Marijuana Farm
• Brick Councilwoman Rips Activists Over Marijuana Song
• Adamston Farm Owners Claim 'Default Approval' In Brick
• Brick Planners' Attorney Rebukes Lettuce Farm's Approval Claim

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